Imagine what the world could be
by Night Hawk 97
Summary: Hermione is brilliant, but she could have been amazing. Luna is absent, but never blind, because she has the one thing Hermione does not. 3rd person, Luna POV, character study, no pairings.


Hermione never understood Luna. To be fair, not a great many people ever did.

Luna thinks she might understand Hermione. She isn't sure, though. Luna makes a point of being at least a little not-sure on most things.

When Luna first meets Hermione, she watches the other girl across the carriage, from above her magazine.

Upside down, the words still have meaning, though they can't be read. The dark lines can form pictures. Meaning from nothing, and isn't that funny?

But Hermione does not see that way; on this, Luna isn't even a bit not-sure.

Hermione always speaks with purpose. With clarity and precision. How strange her world is. Everything is either already known, or in time it can be. Prevailing order. Yes, now bizarre.

Luna can understand why Hermione likes science. There is a certain enchantment in the way the method is so wonderfully simple.

Mummy was a scientist, not because she could look around and explain where the rain comes from, the way the world spins, but because she asked like one. But one can do that well, and still miss the picture. The world isn't about order. Mummy tried to remember that.

Science has its place. A lot of places. The way of thinking can get you far; history, biology, psychology. But things that are unquantifiable, like love, don't have a place in science. The more one knows about these matters, the less questions they can answer with certainty.

That is why Mummy needed Daddy, to remind her that science is the study of the world, and although philosophy is a difficult match for science, that doesn't mean matters of philosophy are not matters of the world.

Luna knows a lot – she knows in her head that days last longer in summer, and she knows in her heart that she feels joy when the thestrals sing. But she remembers Mummy, and she does not get caught up on knowing too much.

There is a difference between thinking and knowing, like there is a difference between Luna and Hermione. It makes Luna sad, sometimes, that the more one knows, the less one tends to think.

Luna asks Hermione, "What happens when you know enough to satisfy your curiosity?"

She looks scandalised. "Curiosity isn't some finite thing to fill up."

That's a new idea. Luna wonders if it could be. "What is it, then?"

"Curiosity? Well… it is inquisitiveness, a desire to learn."

"But where does it come from?"

"Our minds."

Luna thinks that Hermione doesn't really understand at all.

Hermione doesn't like things that come without explanations. She thinks all thinks should. When they don't, she reasons that they must be lacking.

Luna thinks that might be why Hermione doesn't like her much.

Does Hermione look down on people who make up fanciful explanations to fill the void of which they don't know? Does she call them children? Luna wonders if that is an insult.

Luna misses the time when more people around her were content to think like children. Back then, life was a wonder and they still dared to dream big, and the world did not try to wake them. Everyone wants to grow up too fast, into rationality and reason, which they call wisdom. She lives in hope that maybe someone else, somewhere, will remember to never grow out of being a child, as she did. Someone will not ask _why_; they will ask _why not_, and that thought will bloom, made all the more beautiful for the struggle.

Luna watches Hermione grow old. As years go on and families grow larger, she collects books out of nostalgia more than practice. Not enough time, never enough time to sit and think, she says.

Luna sees more grey in the world than she would like. There need be none at all. All these fading people determined to grow wiser with age because they reason that all other heights must be behind them…

When Hermione is grey, Luna asks from the blue, "What is the secret of life?"

And Hermione answers with sympathy, "Don't you think we're a little old to be searching for it, Luna?"

Luna thinks that the answer must be a little different for everybody. "For me, it is the thing that others take away when they provide all the answers, when they give us cause to stop looking for ourselves. It is the thing whose absence brings about the dark and left us with no need to exercise our imagination. What is your secret happiness?"

Hermione doesn't know a response for that.

She will try to know it, but she must fail. You can't know it, no matter how clever. You can only imagine. And so Hermione will stay silent, and Luna will dream.

To the Hermiones of the world, Luna bids – take back your certainty, your measurements and your logic. Give her a field, with a tree, and she will not think about how it grew that tall, how it turned bits of carbon in the air into a massive structure. She will not linger on what she already knows; no, she will ask herself why the bird sings.

She will wonder and marvel at things unknown.

Luna is glad that whole picture is not as Hermione sees it, for if the world was full of answers, and life left no room for dreams, then magic could not exist.


End file.
